Field of the Invention
The present invention involves detecting and tracking socially disruptive events, such as but not limited to communicable disease outbreaks, civil unrest, and animal and plant disease, and the collection, analysis, workflow management, and reporting of information related to those events using various communications modes.
Description of the Related Art
In “A Heuristic Indication and Warning Staging Model for Detection and Assessment of Biological Events,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, March/April 2008; vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 158-171, by Wilson et al., the development of a disease surveillance system is described. The article refers to previous technologies developed by others that, in conjunction with the co-authors' work, formed the basis for the invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,725,565 (“the '565 patent”), and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/230,397 (“the '397 application”), both owned by assignee Georgetown University. Those patent references describe a system and method for detecting operational socially-disruptive events on a global scale, assigning or associating event severity values or indicia to the event data, modeling the data in conjunction with linguistics analysis to establish responsive actions, generating visualization and modeling capabilities for communicating event information, and modeling event propagation for containment and forecasting purposes. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/192,160 (“the '160 application”), which is also owned by assignee Georgetown University, extends the above system and method to events impacting plants, and includes a specific text classification scheme.
The common specification in the '565 patent and the '397 application describes the history and development of open-source surveillance as a methodology for detecting events to preserve human health and economic well-being as a result of dense populations and frequent air travel, both of which can affect the emergence and development of events on a global scale. Those patent references also describe numerous historical disease outbreaks, emergent animal and plant diseases, civil unrest events, weapons of mass destruction events, and other event types, all of which are postulated to affect economic and social institutions. Those patent references also mention other surveillance systems, most of which relate to monitoring biological events such as, but not limited to, influenza and bird flu.
In the '565 patent and the '397 application, the system and method of detecting global events using indications and warnings (I&Ws) related to events is described. Indications and warnings, however, have been used prior to the inventions described in the '565 patent and the '397 application, including their use in describing events that might disrupt the everyday social life of individuals, communities, and institutions. It is well known that I&Ws may appear in local, regional, or national media sources related to one or more events, whether or not those events are expressly recognized or not.
Event detection techniques using open source information available on the Internet is broadly suggested in “The MiTAP System for Monitoring Reports of Disease Outbreak” (2004), by L. E. Damianos et al. As the title indicates, that article focuses on detecting biological events. Other prior art also describes techniques for event detection, but they do not describe the use of I&Ws for global event detection in the same way as the invention described in the '565 patent, or in the '397 and '160 applications.
U.S. Publication No. 2006/0230071 (Kass), identified in the '565 patent, describes an “event analysis system [that] monitors information available from both publicly and privately distributed networks of information for events that are relevant to the user's particular business concern. Those concerns are defined in a customized model of the user's organization and external business environment.”Kass et al. describes an event model based on root-cause analysis (in FIG. 3 of the '565 patent, the root has three branches—products, organization, and society). A new ad campaign, a labor dispute, and a stock price change are given as examples of organization-centered events. Environmental changes or demographic changes are given as examples of society-centered events. A product recall, a manufacturing difficulty that affects a product, and a rebate on a product are given as examples of product-centered events. The termination of each root branch is called a “leaf” node, and they are associated with “expressions” which help the system determine if article text includes an event of the event type represented in a leaf node. So-called “tags” are used to specify text strings or variables which the event analysis system uses to detect events which match the event type. Example text string tags are date, time, tense, and confidence, and variable tags may be dollar values.
In Kass et al. events are detected from information sources. The system uses an information source model to “establish, define, or otherwise identify information sources,” such as domain names (e.g., “news.abcbnewspaper.com”), identifiers (e.g., an IP address and port number), or other identifiers to specify information sources which the event analysis system will monitor. The event analysis system then retrieves information, such as news articles, blog entries, web site content, and electronic documents from those sources. In particular, an event processing control program “scans the information sources 116” and retrieves new articles, filters them, and initiates the event detection engine, which processes each filtered article to identify events. Scanning is apparently done using the “tags” as described above, but Kass et al. does not appear to describe how it filters the information, only that filters are used to remove articles not relevant as indicated in the environment model 130. The environment model defines entities and the relationships between entities.
U.S. Publication No. 2008/0319942 (Courdy et al.) teaches a method of searching a database of known patient records, identifying one or more patients from the database, entering the selected patient into a specific group (such as a cancer group), and allowing a user to manually enter updated patient information into that patient's record. The invention is discussed in connection with a browser-based “medical research system.” FIG. 1 relates to a “HCI Cancer Clinical Research.” Most of the figures in the patent show various templates and data entry forms that a user can use to enter data about patients, pathological samples, test results, and the like, and forms for changing or tailoring the templates and data entry forms (e.g., to add more entry fields).
FIG. 3 of Courdy et al. shows a data entry form having a “Medical Event Type” drop-down menu. On FIG. 5, there is shown a series of search entry fields (i.e., text-based fields, drop down menus, and the like). One portion of the template shown in FIG. 5 includes, under the heading “Medical Event Parameters,” a field fir entering an “Event Type,” “Start Date,” and “End Date” (unlabelled). A larger text field box titled “Extended Attributes” is also shown. In FIG. 6, a “patient update window” is shown, which includes a drop down menu entitled “Select a Medical Event Type”; next to the menu is a selectable button labeled “Link Selected as Medical Event.” In various other figures, events are shown as being things like “surgery,” “tumor biopsy,” “surgical revision,” etc., suggesting they are known, actual events related to patients.
U.S. Patent Pub. 2008-0027749 (Myers et al.) discloses a travel event report, called a Travel Information Report (TIR), having four major sections: Pre-Trip Information, Destination Information (for one or more destinations), General Advice, and Products and Services. The Pre-Trip section is described as including travel categories including Alerts, Entry/Exit Requirements, and Pre-Trip Health considerations. Alerts may include, but are not limited to, Safety/Security, Weather, and Transportation. The Pre-Trip Health section is described as also including information about immunizations, health risks, and the like. One of the travel categories is described as “Social Customs,” and includes information about “Public Holidays & Events.” The TIR is also described as including “a rating (such as from 1 to 5 in tenth increments, for example), which is a weighted-average of the total risk of the trip represented by the TIR as determined by criteria applied to the travel data in the TIR. This rating can be illustrated, for example, by a series of “jet” graphics printed on the TIR.” Another embodiment is described where a company's assets are analyzed relative to a known “intelligence event.” Myers et al. further describes an information aggregator that collects all information for a travel destination (geographical location) and then summarizes the information in a report for the destination using categories along with an overall risk rating for the destination.
Other references that disclose aspects of event detection are summarized in the support document filed by the applicants in the Patent Office in connection with the '565 patent.